LPI-Based Transmit Resource Scheduling for Target Tracking With Distributed MIMO Radar Systems

This article explores the effect of the low probability of intercept (LPI) performance optimization on target tracking in distributed MIMO (D-MIMO) radar systems, where an intercept receiver is equipped on the target. The aim of the proposed LPI-based transmit resource scheduling (LPI-TRS) strategy is to optimize the LPI performance of the D-MIMO systems meanwhile satisfy the target tracking accuracy requirement by the proper transmit resource management design. Different from the existing research, we introduce a cascadingmathematicalmodel to describe the intercept process with the specific intercept receiver. A cascading product of the probabilities of interception and detection deduces the probability of report P-R for the interceptor, to evaluate the LPI performance of one transmit radar node. Accordingly, the maximum P-R is employed, for the overall D-MIMO radar systems, to perform as the global LPI performance metric. Based on the min-max criterion, by minimizing the global LPI metric, a novel non-convex optimization problem is formulated wherein the requirements for target tracking performance and the system resource limitation are considered as the constraints. Wherein the tracking task is fulfilled by the two-tier hybrid processing framework. Meanwhile, we introduce a convex relaxation-based approach, so the sub-optimal results are acquired via a two-step fast computational search algorithm. Subsequently, the closed-loop scheme is set up to achieve LPI-based resource awareness in DMIMO radar systems. Several numerical results demonstrate the theoretical analysis and show that the proposed LPI-TRS leads to significant LPI performance improvements.